Last Call For Cruz Control, Con't

Part of the "Biden's incompetence!11!!" argument is the fact that the Biden administration has yet to fill hundreds of executive agency nominations that require Senate approval. But Republican senators like Rand Paul, Tom Cotton, and especially Ted Cruz have been blocking nominations for months over petty stupidity.

The U.S. Treasury is being held hostage by Republican Senator Ted Cruz's efforts to halt a Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline, blocking critical appointments when the federal debt limit remains a pressing issue, White House officials and Democrats in Congress say.

Only four confirmed nominees are in place in the top ranks of the Treasury, of about 20 slots for presidential picks, officials say. More than eight months after Democratic President Joe Biden took office, his nominees across the government are being approved at a slower rate than the past three presidents, federal data shows.

In addition to the toll that Cruz's actions are taking on the Treasury's ability to tackle the federal debt limit, they are hurting the Biden administration's ability to address other big problems, senior officials say, including a global minimum tax, terrorism and financial intelligence.

Cruz has wielded power by being a lone holdout on a fast-track confirmation process that requires consent by all 100 senators for non-controversial nominees - a description the White House says fits many of the Treasury picks as well as others awaiting Senate confirmation, including numerous ambassadors.

Cruz wants Biden to impose sanctions that would halt Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

Biden, despite his opposition to the pipeline, has said he waived sanctions because the project was nearly complete and he wanted to rebuild strained ties with Germany, a key U.S. ally.

As far as Cruz is concerned, a spokesman for the senator said, the solution is simple: he will remove the holds if the Biden administration sanctions the company behind the pipeline project, something he insists is required under U.S. law.

Failure to do so "hands Vladimir Putin a geostrategic victory" and "entrenches corrupt Russian influence in Europe" Cruz said in a letter on Sept. 13, referring to the Russian president.

 

Suddenly, Ted Cruz cares about punishing Russia over a gas pipeline, but that's strictly because he thinks it would hurt US energy companies in Texas. Otherwise, Cruz is happy to give Putin a pass. 

 

But it also gives Cruz the excuse he needs to block Biden nominations in the Senate, and he's been blocking them for more than six months. 

In fact, multiple Republican senators are currently blocking Biden nominations.

But somehow, this is Joe Biden's fault.

Nobody Should Be Supplies By This

It's becoming increasingly clear that COVID-19 broke the global "just in time" supply chain, and that things aren't going to be fixed anytime soon without, say, major infrastructure investments, and major pay hikes by logistics companies always looking to cut costs.

Like toy blocks hurled from the heavens, nearly 80,000 shipping containers are stacked in various configurations at the Port of Savannah — 50 percent more than usual.

The steel boxes are waiting for ships to carry them to their final destination, or for trucks to haul them to warehouses that are themselves stuffed to the rafters. Some 700 containers have been left at the port, on the banks of the Savannah River, by their owners for a month or more.

“They’re not coming to get their freight,” complained Griff Lynch, the executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority. “We’ve never had the yard as full as this.”

As he speaks, another vessel glides silently toward an open berth — the 1,207-foot-long Yang Ming Witness, its decks jammed with containers full of clothing, shoes, electronics and other stuff made in factories in Asia. Towering cranes soon pluck the thousands of boxes off the ship — more cargo that must be stashed somewhere.

“Certainly,” Mr. Lynch said, “the stress level has never been higher.”

It has come to this in the Great Supply Chain Disruption: They are running out of places to put things at one of the largest ports in the United States. As major ports contend with a staggering pileup of cargo, what once seemed like a temporary phenomenon — a traffic jam that would eventually dissipate — is increasingly viewed as a new reality that could require a substantial refashioning of the world’s shipping infrastructure.

As the Savannah port works through the backlog, Mr. Lynch has reluctantly forced ships to wait at sea for more than nine days. On a recent afternoon, more than 20 ships were stuck in the queue, anchored up to 17 miles off the coast in the Atlantic.

Such lines have become common around the globe, from the more than 50 ships marooned last week in the Pacific near Los Angeles to smaller numbers bobbing off terminals in the New York area, to hundreds waylaid off ports in China.

The turmoil in the shipping industry and the broader crisis in supply chains is showing no signs of relenting. It stands as a gnawing source of worry throughout the global economy, challenging once-hopeful assumptions of a vigorous return to growth as vaccines limit the spread of the pandemic.

The disruption helps explain why Germany’s industrial fortunes are sagging, why inflation has become a cause for concern among central bankers, and why American manufacturers are now waiting a record 92 days on average to assemble the parts and raw materials they need to make their goods, according to the Institute of Supply Management.

On the surface, the upheaval appears to be a series of intertwined product shortages. Because shipping containers are in short supply in China, factories that depend on Chinese-made parts and chemicals in the rest of the world have had to limit production.

But the situation at the port of Savannah attests to a more complicated and insidious series of overlapping problems. It is not merely that goods are scarce. It is that products are stuck in the wrong places, and separated from where they are supposed to be by stubborn and constantly shifting barriers.

The shortage of finished goods at retailers represents the flip side of the containers stacked on ships marooned at sea and massed on the riverbanks. The pileup in warehouses is itself a reflection of shortages of truck drivers needed to carry goods to their next destinations.

 

Basically everything that could have gone wrong with supply chain management in the last 20 months has gone wrong: retirements of experienced ship captains and truckers, necessary pandemic regulations, all the slack ruthlessly burned out of the supply chains, overworked everybody, very real and very pressing climate change concerns, and rapidly increasing demand as global economies come out of hibernation.

All that is too much for the current system to handle, and it's broken, very possibly beyond repair.

The question now is what replaces it, and how much it's going to cost the globe.

Orange You Glad He's Back

After the weekend's rally in Des Moines, it's painfully clear that The Former Guy™ is now the Only Guy for the GOP, whether they want it or not.

Nine months ago, Republicans were questioning Donald Trump’s place as the lead fixture of their party. Saturday night provided the clearest evidence yet that they want him right there.

Not one year removed from surviving a second impeachment, the former president rallied before thousands of his most loyal supporters across the Iowa State Fairgrounds on a balmy Midwestern evening. He regaled them with his stories from the White House, his falsehoods and complaints about the 2020 election results, and his criticisms of the Biden administration on everything from immigration to the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The bulk of Trump’s speech was devoted to his baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen — a false belief that was supported by the crowd, who broke out into chants of “Trump won! Trump won! Trump won!”

But the notable elements were not what was said by Trump, but who was there with him. Appearing alongside the former president was a who’s who of influential Republicans in the Hawkeye state, including Sen. Chuck Grassley and Gov. Kim Reynolds, Iowa Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Ashley Hinson, former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker and Iowa GOP Chair Jeff Kaufmann.

Trump has held rallies since leaving the White House. But never have elected Republicans of such tenure and stature appeared with him. And the presence of Grassley in particular signified that whatever qualms the GOP may have had with Trump are now faded memories; whatever questions they had about the direction of the party have been resolved.

Trump himself seemed to recognize as much, as he focused intently on relitigating the results of the 2020 elections even while admitting his own party members wished he would just move on.

“Sir, think to the future, don’t go back to the past,” Trump said some Republican members of Congress have advised him.

“I’m telling you the single biggest issue, as bad as the border is and it’s horrible, horrible what they’re doing they’re destroying our country, but as bad as that is the single biggest issue the issue that gets the most pull, the most respect, the biggest cheers is talking about the election fraud of the 2020 presidential election,” Trump said.

It was not that long ago when there was more uncertainty about Trump’s future within the party. Back in January, Grassley offered a stinging condemnation of Trump’s behavior in the aftermath of the 2020 election — the type of statement that, at its heart, suggested a desire to rid himself of the messiness.

“The reality is, he lost. He brought over 60 lawsuits and lost all but one of them. He was not able to challenge enough votes to overcome President Biden’s significant margins in key states,” Grassley said in a statement offered after voting against Trump’s second impeachment. “He belittled and harassed elected officials across the country to get his way. He encouraged his own, loyal vice president, Mike Pence, to take extraordinary and unconstitutional actions during the Electoral College count.”

But Grassley is in a different place now. He recently announced, at age 88, that he is running for an eighth term. And with it, Trump has gone from nuisance to needed.

This week, Grassley and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee released a report that claimed Trump’s reported pressure on the Department of Justice to change election results was not just overblown but consistent with the commitments of the office of the president to uphold the Constitution. And on Saturday night, Trump brought Grassley on stage to offer his “complete and total endorsement for reelection.”

“If I didn’t accept the endorsement of a person that’s got 91 percent of the Republican voters in Iowa, I wouldn’t be too smart,” Grassley said.

Going forward, Republicans have to run with, towards, and cheering Donald Trump. Nothing has changed for the GOP heading into 2022. Trump's ego was always going to eventually mean he was going to take the spotlight and pick just about every eventual primary winner. They're all going to be loyal to Trump, they're all going to try to get away from "The election was stolen" but Trump won't let them, and neither will the majority of Republican primary voters.

And they may actually find a way to lose in 2022 because of it.

Everyone they run in the next 13 months is going to be Trump. Some of them will win House and Senate races.

But not all of them. The one thing that could sink their midterm hopes is happening as we speak. And Trump's going to remind everyone why he lost in 2020, along with a whole lot of GOP candidates. He won't be able to help himself. The networks and cable shows will cover every word of his racist rallies and people will suddenly have a very clear comparison to Biden.

That's good, because "Joe Biden is in real trouble!" is a meme that's not going away.

W. Mondale Robinson spent a large chunk of last fall in clubs and bars and concert venues in Georgia, trying to convince disenchanted Black men that casting a ballot — in the 2020 general election, then the Georgia runoffs for the U.S. Senate — could finally mean real change in their communities.

But Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project, thinks the case would be a lot harder to make now. He remembers the exact moment his optimism that President Biden would be different began to fade: when Democrats in May said they were willing to significantly weaken a policing reform bill to get Republican support.

More disappointments followed. Robinson was dismayed that Biden did not push for filibuster reform to enact a $15 minimum wage. He was upset that the president did not try to halt a raft of voting restrictions passed by Georgia’s GOP-led legislature.

“I think the frustration is at an all-time high, and Biden can’t go to Georgia or any other Black state in the South and say, ‘This is what we delivered in 2021,’ ” said Robinson, whose group believes it reached 1.2 million Black men in Georgia. “Black men are pissed off about the nothingness that has happened . . . Does it make the work harder? It makes the work damn near impossible.”

After an initial burst of support, Biden has seen his approval ratings fall significantly in recent months. A Washington Post average of polls since the start of September shows 44 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s job approval, while 49 percent disapprove.

And polls suggest support for Biden has sunk notably among key Democratic constituencies — Blacks, Latinos, women and young people. Pew Research Center polls found Biden’s approval rating among Black Americans fell from 85 percent in July to 67 percent in September, while also falling 16 points among Hispanics and 14 points among Asians.

Interviews with nearly 20 advocates, activists and politicians in the crucial state of Georgia — which Biden won narrowly, in large part due to support from Black voters, after decades of Republican dominance — give a sense of the sentiments behind those numbers. At the center are Black and other minority voters who helped fuel Biden’s victory, but who now see what they consider unfulfilled promises and dwindling hope for meaningful change.

In some sense, the “benefit of the doubt” portion of Biden’s presidency is over. While the president gained initial goodwill among many from simply not being Trump, especially when it came to the coronavirus, now those who supported him are demanding results, and his lack of a devoted base is starting to show.

“If midterms are about enthusiasm and turnout, who do you think is excited to vote on November 2 at this moment?” said Nsé Ufot, chief executive officer of the New Georgia Project, which has registered more than a half-million voters. “Because it ain’t Democrats. It ain’t Black folks. It ain’t young people.”

 

It's not 100% Biden's fault. He's getting stabbed in the back (and the front) daily by President Joe Manchin and Vice President Sinema. Biden's not the one blocking filibuster reform or removal. But the Republican plan for an overwhelming midterm win requires Donald Trump to not be in the news daily, either.

 

Don't get me wrong, the headwinds against Biden and the Dems are still overwhelming. It'll take a miracle to keep Congress.

 

Perversely, that miracle may just have shown up, is what I'm saying.

StupidiNews!

• Southwest Airlines blamed bad weather and short staffing for the cancellation of over 1,000 flights on Sunday, stranding thousands of people at airports across the US.
• Lava tumbled down the La Palma hillsides of Spain on Sunday as aftershocks of last month's Cumbra Vieja volcanic eruption continued into their third week.
• Australia is emerging from COVID-19 lockdown this week as fully vaccinated customers are now able to eat out and visit stores.
• Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is "confident" that Congress will ratify compliance with a global corporate tax agreement by 136 countries to set a minimum tax of 15%.
• Microsoft is embracing right-to-repair for XBox and Surface hardware, but precisely how much may not be worked out until next year.
  

Sunday Long Read: Silly Con Valley

Streaming giant Netflix says it wants to help address the nation's racial inequalities, but as Victor Luckerson at Wired Magazine asks in our Sunday Long Read, why should anyone bother to take any tech company seriously on issues of race and especially Black America?

IN THE SPRING of 2020, folks in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward started flocking to the Sankofa food pantry on Dauphine Street however they could—by car, on bicycles, rolling pushcarts on foot. The lines were brisk but constant as the cascading effects of the coronavirus pandemic swept through the neighborhood of pastel-colored houses. Some people had lost jobs. Others were caring for loved ones sick with the virus, or picking up food for people under quarantine. For Rashida Ferdinand, the director of the nonprofit that operates the pantry, the crush of demand posed a series of dilemmas—beginning with the fact that she could no longer allow people inside the building. But one thing was sure: Shutting down the pantry was out of the question. No matter what, Ferdinand says, “we knew we needed to stay open.”

After circulating undetected through the city during much of Mardi Gras, the coronavirus had overwhelmed New Orleans with unprecedented speed, and it was killing more people per capita there than nearly anywhere else in the United States. Under lockdown, almost 100,000 people in the Crescent City had been thrown out of work as businesses were forced to shutter and tourism ground to a halt. In the Lower Ninth Ward, where a third of residents work in either food service, lodging, or retail, and where household incomes are half the parish average, the need for aid was especially acute. In so-called good times, about 350 people relied on Sankofa’s services. Now Ferdinand’s organization was furnishing more than 800 people a month with milk, eggs, canned beans, and other staples.

To meet the need, Sankofa stretched itself. The pantry went from being open two days a week to four. It began delivering food to people who could not collect it in person. When some of Ferdinand’s employees started working from home for fear of contracting the virus, she started handing out food herself. With sheets of plexiglass purchased from Ace Hardware, she improvised a Covid-safe storefront on Sankofa’s patio deck. Inside, nearly a dozen red and black metal shelves took over most of the headquarters’ open floor plan. “Our whole front office became the pantry,” she says.

But then the next dilemma reared up: Sankofa was running out of money. The nonprofit employed about a dozen people and was racking up expenses faster than usual, while sources of grant funding were drying up in the financial uncertainty of the pandemic.

Relief seemed to be on the way from the federal government. In late March, Congress authorized $349 billion in forgivable loans to help small businesses and nonprofits maintain their payroll amid the shutdown. To access the funds, business owners had to go through financial institutions. So Ferdinand immediately called Capital One, where Sankofa had banked for 10 years and maintained a typical account balance of around $300,000. But a representative told her the bank could not process her loan application. “I don’t know what was going on with Capital One, but we were disregarded,” Ferdinand says. “There wasn’t a person set up to actually move this needle forward and work with small business owners.”

So Ferdinand began researching other lenders that might be able to help her. She ultimately turned to Hope Credit Union, a Black-operated financial institution based in Jackson, Mississippi, which took on her loan application right away.

Now in its 26th year of operation, Hope’s mission is to serve low-income communities and people of color left behind by the traditional banking system. The organization has weathered disasters in the Deep South before, from Hurricane Katrina to the Great Recession. In fact, Hope tends to gain customers during such events, which lay bare the ways in which the US economy devalues Black life and Black ambition. “I think crises have catapulted our growth,” says Bill Bynum, Hope’s CEO. “Unfortunately, very few organizations are providing financial services to those who have the greatest need.”

As the pandemic continued to unfold, Hope also got an infusion of capital from an unlikely source: Silicon Valley. In June 2020, following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Netflix announced that it would place a $10 million deposit at Hope, the largest sum the credit union had ever received from a single customer.

Floyd’s killing sparked widespread protests in the streets and calls for racial justice in Fortune 500 boardrooms. But while corporate America’s official responses often felt like crisis PR disguised as philanthropy, Netflix’s approach stood out. The company’s deposit at Hope was just one small part of a plan drawn up by a mid-level HR executive who had been researching Black-operated banks in his spare time. Following his advice, the company pledged to invest 2 percent of its cash holdings in financial institutions and organizations that directly support Black communities—a proportion of the company’s wealth that, at the time of the announcement, amounted to about $100 million. As Netflix’s fortunes rose, the theory went, so too would those of Black businesses and nonprofits like Ferdinand’s.

Netflix’s announcement also included a call to action. The streaming giant challenged other firms to follow its lead and dedicate some share of their cash to Black economic initiatives. “This is not charity,” says Aaron Mitchell, the human resources director at Netflix who spent months devising the Black banks proposal. “This is not one time.”

Whether Netflix’s move is sufficient is a different kind of question. This summer a handful of tech companies—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, and Tesla—reached a collective valuation of $9.6 trillion, about a quarter of the entire S&P 500. Meanwhile, Black communities have weathered decades of disinvestment, struggling in a segregated economy that has persisted long since the eradication of Jim Crow, and the nation’s wealth is more unevenly distributed today than at any time since before the Great Depression. Hope, with Netflix’s help, aims to reverse that flow of inequality. “We’re looking to basically import deposits, import capital, into these wealth-starved communities,” Bynum says. But will Netflix keep faith with those communities?

 

Ten million isn't nothing, but it sure buys a lot of good will and a lot of free press, and not much else. We'll see if Netflix and the rest of the techbros can follow through, but I frankly don't see it happening for much longer, particularly once the federal government starts asking very uncomfortable questions about their revenue streams, digital monopolies, and other things with intent to maybe break up some trillion-dollar corporate monsters.

We'll see.

The Austrian Gambit

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has resigned as the massive corruption and bribery probe investigating the right-wing leader and his government made his continued leadership impossible.

In a televised address, the 35-year-old premier denied the allegations against him but recommended leadership be handed to Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg. He said he would stay on as head of his party and take the position of leader of his conservative bloc in parliament.

“My country is more important to me than my person,” he said. “I want to make space to prevent chaos and ensure stability.”

Pressure had been building on Kurz since his offices, the headquarters of his Austrian People’s Party and the Finance Ministry were raided in recent days. Prosecutors said the chancellor and nine of his close associates were being investigated on criminal charges including breach of trust, corruption and bribery.

Kurz became the youngest head of government in the world when he took office as chancellor in 2017 at age 31. He mixed sleek, media-savvy flair with populist rhetoric.

But investigations are looking at whether his rise was bolstered by illegal means.

Between 2016 and 2018, he and members of his inner circle are accused of being involved in using federal funds to pay for polling that appeared favorable to Kurz — and was published in the media without being declared as advertising.

It is the latest in several scandals to tarnish the Austrian chancellor.

His last government was toppled in 2019 when the “Ibiza Scandal” triggered a breakup with his far-right coalition partner. He became the country’s first postwar chancellor to be removed in a vote of no confidence.

Kurz made his political comeback in snap elections — returning as chancellor early last year — but investigators have continued to probe corruption allegations. Last month, he was questioned for more than five hours over allegations that he committed perjury by lying to a parliamentary committee, a charge that can bring a prison sentence.

But the latest revelations — with text messages between the chancellor and his associates gathered in the investigation published in Austrian newspapers — had left his government hanging by a thread.

 

Kurz was elected, kicked out two years ago, won snap elections and now is resigning, all before the age of 36. Not too many politicians get a third bite at the world leader apple, especially at that age. But I expect even if he serves time, he'll be back pushing his right-wing racist anti-immigrant "purity" hate again. 

 

You know those young, charismatic Austrians...

Last Call For School Of Hard Right Knocks, Con't

Senate GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is fully on board with the white supremacy agenda in the nation's schools and for mob rule school boards by white parents.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Saturday told Attorney General Merrick Garland that parents "absolutely should be telling" local schools what to teach amid a debate over mask and vaccine mandates, the role of racial equity education and transgender rights in schools that has become a flash point ahead of the 2022 midterms. 

"Parents absolutely should be telling their local schools what to teach. This is the very basis of representative government," McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, wrote in a letter. "They do this both in elections and -- as protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution -- while petitioning their government for redress of grievance. Telling elected officials they're wrong is democracy, not intimidation." 

CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment. 

The letter from the Senate Minority Leader comes in response to a Justice Department effort to address the increase in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school board members, teachers and workers in public schools. Earlier this week, Garland directed the FBI and US attorneys' offices to meet with federal, state and local law enforcement leaders "to discuss strategies for addressing this disturbing trend," the department said in a news release. 

"Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation's core values," Garland wrote in a memo about the directive. "Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety." 

The National School Boards Association had asked the Biden administration for assistance in dealing with threats against educators for approving mask policies aimed at protecting against Covid-19 and threats over false "propaganda" about critical race theory being taught in classrooms even though that "remains a complex law school and graduate school subject well beyond the scope of a K-12 class."

 

Not only does McConnell subscribe to the notion that the federal government has no business telling parents what their kids should learn, he goes on to say that protecting school board members from those same angry, racist parents who want to harm or even kill school board members is...intimidation of the parents!

It's the same nonsense we heard when McConnell was a kid 60 years ago. It was racist then, and it's racist now.

Taiwan In The Crosshairs

Chinese President Xi Jinping is making it increasingly clear that the "peaceful reunification" of Taiwan into mainland China is going to happen whether Taiwan wants it or not.

Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed on Saturday to achieve "peaceful reunification" with Taiwan, and did not directly mention the use of force after a week of tensions with the Chinese-claimed island that sparked international concern.

Taiwan responded to Xi by calling on Beijing to abandon its coercion, reiterating that only Taiwan's people could decide their future.

Democratically ruled Taiwan has come under increased military and political pressure from Beijing to accept its sovereignty, but Taipei has pledged to defend its freedom.

Speaking at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Xi said the Chinese people have a "glorious tradition" of opposing separatism.

"Taiwan independence separatism is the biggest obstacle to achieving the reunification of the motherland, and the most serious hidden danger to national rejuvenation," he said on the anniversary of the revolution that overthrew the last imperial dynasty in 1911.

Peaceful "reunification" best meets the overall interests of the Taiwanese people, but China will protect its sovereignty and unity, he added.

"No one should underestimate the Chinese people's staunch determination, firm will, and strong ability to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity," Xi said. "The historical task of the complete reunification of the motherland must be fulfilled, and will definitely be fulfilled."

He struck a slightly softer tone than in July, his last major speech mentioning Taiwan, in which he vowed to "smash" any attempts at formal independence. In 2019, he directly threatened to use force to bring the island under Beijing's control.

 

The difference now rather than in 2019 is now Xi and China are not above actually using economic and political as well as military force. 

China’s ambitious leader, Xi Jinping, now presides over what is arguably the country’s most potent military in history. Some argue that Mr. Xi, who has set the stage to rule for a third term starting in 2022, could feel compelled to conquer Taiwan to crown his era in power.

Mr. Xi said Saturday in Beijing that Taiwan independence “was a grave lurking threat to national rejuvenation.” China wanted peaceful unification, he said, but added: “Nobody should underestimate the staunch determination, firm will and powerful ability of the Chinese people to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Few believe a war is imminent or foreordained, in part because the economic and diplomatic aftershocks would be staggering for China. Yet even if the recent flights into Taiwan’s self-declared air identification zone are intended merely as political pressure, not a prelude to war, China’s financial, political and military ascendancy has made preserving the island’s security a gravely complex endeavor.

Until recently, the United States believed it could hold Chinese territorial ambitions in check, but the military superiority it long held may not be enough. When the Pentagon organized a war game in October 2020, an American “blue team” struggled against new Chinese weaponry in a simulated battle over Taiwan.

China now acts with increasing confidence, in part because many officials, including Mr. Xi, hold the view that American power has faltered. The United States’ failures with the Covid-19 pandemic and its political upheavals have reinforced such views.

Some advisers and former officers in China argue that the United States no longer has the will to send forces if a war were to break out over Taiwan. Under the right conditions, others suggest, the People’s Liberation Army could prevail if it did.

“Would the United States court death for Taiwan?” Teng Jianqun, a former Chinese navy captain, said in a recent interview on Chinese television.

 

Putin's Russia may excel at the long con, but China is the undisputed master of it. If they are moving now on Taiwan, and making it clear that reunifying is the goal to their own people, something's about to happen. The wheels are in motion, and once set, well...

2021 may be a far longer year than we thought.

The Road To Gilead, Texas Edition, Con't

It took less than 48 hours for Texas AG Ken Paxton to find Trump-appointed appeals court judges to reinstate Texas's ridiculous abortion ban after a federal judge blocked it on Thursday, and as of this morning, anyone can once again take out a $10,000 state-sponsored bounty on anyone else involved in an abortion in the state.

A federal appeals court late Friday reinstated the nation’s most restrictive abortion law, which bars the procedure as early as six weeks into pregnancy with no exceptions for rape or incest.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit granted a request filed Friday afternoon by the Texas attorney general to temporarily suspend a judge’s order blocking the law, which has halted most abortions in the state.

Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) had asked the appeals court to reverse the injunction by U.S. District Judge Robert L. Pitman, who sided with the Biden administration Wednesday night and characterized the abortion ban as an “unprecedented and aggressive scheme to deprive its citizens of a significant and well-established constitutional right.”

A three-judge panel of the conservative-leaning court gave the Justice Department until 5 p.m. Tuesday to respond to the appeal.

Paxton told the appeals court that the Justice Department has no legal authority to sue the state and said the appeals court must intervene immediately to lift the injunction. The lower-court judge overstepped, Paxton said, by halting a law that is enforced by private citizens, not state government officials.

“A court ‘cannot lawfully enjoin the world at large’ let alone hold Texas responsible for the filings of private citizens that Texas is powerless to prevent,” the filing states.

It asked the court to rule on that issue by Tuesday morning and to temporarily suspend Pitman’s injunction “as soon as possible.”

The brief order from the 5th Circuit, issued about five hours after the appeal was filed, did not rule on the merits of the state’s request. Any decision from the 5th Circuit could put the issue back before the Supreme Court, which declined to block the law when it took effect Sept. 1 but said it raises serious constitutional questions.

 

"You can't stop us because we're only allowing citizens to enforce the law and not the state!" is so stupidly, wildly dangerous that it constitutes codified mob rule. Texas could turn anything into a citizen-enforced bounty: law enforcement, border enforcement, school protection, voting observation, whatever.

In a state with open carry like Texas, it's a recipe for absolute vigilante law, only the state's willing to pay up taxpayer funds for letters of marque. It's state-sponsored terrorism of women.

Of course Trump Republicans love it.

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

As President Biden restored the Trump-era cuts to three Obama-expanded national monuments (as Republicans wanted to sell the land rights to developers and Trump was always up for racist, petty garbage) this week, next week he will be the first US President to observe Indigenous Peoples' Day over Columbus Day.

President Joe Biden on Friday issued the first-ever presidential proclamation of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, lending the most significant boost yet to efforts to refocus the federal holiday celebrating Christopher Columbus toward an appreciation of Native peoples.

The day will be observed Oct. 11, along with Columbus Day, which is established by Congress. While Native Americans have campaigned for years for local and national days in recognition of the country’s indigenous peoples, Biden’s announcement appeared to catch many by surprise.

“This was completely unexpected. Even though we’ve been talking about it and wanting it for so long,” said Hillary Kempenich, an artist and member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. In 2019, she and other tribal members successfully campaigned for her town of Grand Forks, N.D., to replace Columbus Day with a day recognizing Native peoples.

“I’m kind of overwhelmed with joy,” said Kempenich. She was waiting Friday afternoon for her eighth-grade daughter, who grew up challenging teachers’ depictions of Columbus, to come home from school so Kempenich could share the news.

“For generations, Federal policies systematically sought to assimilate and displace Native people and eradicate Native cultures,” Biden wrote in the Indigenous Peoples’ Day proclamation. “Today, we recognize Indigenous peoples’ resilience and strength as well as the immeasurable positive impact that they have made on every aspect of American society.”

In a separate proclamation on Columbus Day, Biden praised the role of Italian Americans in U.S. society, but also referenced the violence and harm Columbus and other explorers of the age brought about on the Americas.

Making landfall in what is now the Bahamas on Oct. 12, 1492, Columbus, an Italian, was the first of a wave of European explorers who decimated Native populations in the Americas in quests for gold and other wealth, including people to enslave.

“Today, we also acknowledge the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities,” Biden wrote. “It is a measure of our greatness as a Nation that we do not seek to bury these shameful episodes of our past — that we face them honestly, we bring them to the light, and we do all we can to address them.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden “felt strongly” about recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day. Asked if Biden might seek to end marking Columbus Day as a federal holiday, she replied, “I don’t have any predictions at this point.”

John Echohawk, executive director of the Native American Rights Fund, said the president’s decision to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day was an important step.

“Big changes happen from each small step, and we hope this administration intends to continue making positive steps towards shaping a brighter future for all citizens,” Echohawak said.

 

Biden's commitment to Native issues didn't just stop at appointing Rep. Deb Halaand as Interior Secretary, it's being followed by beefy executive action, more than Obama was allowed to take, and certainly more than Trump would ever get off his orange ass to do.

But still he's going to be hated, because the media tells you he's "incompetent". Biden is at his best doing truly meaningful things like this, from the heart. It's why I voted for him, and not just against Trump.

More of this, please.

 

A Nobel Pursuit, Con't

This year's Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to two dissident journalists, Maria Ressa of the Philippines, and Dmitry Muratov of Russia, for their work in exposing corrupt autocrats and expanding a free press in countries where doing so can be fatal.

Journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their fight to defend free expression in the Philippines and Russia.

Ressa is the co-founder of the investigative digital media company Rappler, which has focused on the brutal war on drugs waged by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.

Muratov is a co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, an independent newspaper holding power to account in President Vladimir Putin's increasingly authoritarian Russia.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it recognized the pair for their "efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace."

More broadly, the committee said it wanted to highlight the plight of journalists across the globe who are operating in what watchdogs say is an increasingly repressive environment.

"This prize will not solve the problems that journalists and freedom of expression is facing," Berit Reiss-Andersen, the committee's chairwoman, told a news conference.

"But it will help shed a light on the importance of the work of journalists, and how dangerous it is not only in places facing war and conflict, but all over the world."

Reacting to the news, Ressa told a live broadcast by Rappler, "I am in shock."

She has been at the forefront of documenting Duterte's war on drugs, which Human Rights Watch says has led to the deaths of more than 12,000 Filipinos, some 2,500 killed by police.

Ressa was also recognized for her work documenting how social media has been used to spread disinformation and harass political opponents.

As editor of Novaya Gazeta, Muratov leads a rare independent news source in Russia. His journalists have faced harassment and threats, and six of them have been murdered, including Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in her Moscow apartment building in 2006.

"Despite the killings and threats, editor-in-chief Muratov has refused to abandon the newspaper's independent policy," the Nobel Committee said in a statement.

 

Compare that to our own "free press" which cozies up to autocrats all over the world in the name of "access journalism". 

 

We need our own Ressa and Muratov. They're certainly not found among our Beltway "betters", who only want to sell books, get rich, and be famous. This all just stands as a punishing reminder as to how our own press is a s bad as Putin and Duterte's propaganda outlets 99% of the time.

StupidiNews!

• Ten Republican senators joined GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and all 50 Democrats to extend the debt ceiling until December 3, but this sets up a massive government shutdown fight.
• A Wall Street Journal report finds that a small group of US special forces troops have been in Taiwan for over a year training local forces to deal with a Chinese invasion.
• Tesla CEO Elon Musk says he will move the electric car's corporate HQ from California to Texas after threatening to do so over the state's COVID lockdown of the company's Fremont factory.
• President Biden once again called for more businesses to mandate vaccination against COVID-19 in a speech in Illinois, Biden said that "My message is require your employees to get vaccinated."
• Moon samples from China's Chang'e-5 lunar probe missions reveals that Luna could have had volcanic activity one billion years more recent than previously suggested by other data.
  

Last Call For The Big Lie, Con't

The insane gaslighting of the Big Lie continues in North Carolina, where Trump Cult Republicans are of course threatening to use armed force to take voting machines in heavily Black Durham County for "inspection" whether the County complies or not.

A group of Republican House members announced Thursday that they are launching a fraud investigation into North Carolina elections and said they would start by inspecting voting machines in Durham County, with or without the cooperation of state or county election officials.

Rep. Jeff McNeely, R-Iredell, conducted a "random drawing" of a county name out of a hat, and Durham County was chosen. Perhaps coincidentally, Republicans have accused Durham County of voter fraud in the past, especially in 2016, when a late vote tally there swung the governor's race in favor of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper over then-incumbent Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.

Citing "many, many millions of accusations" of "machine tampering and votes being switched because of modems," McNeely said at a news conference that lawmakers intend to see for themselves whether the machines have modems in them.

Voting machines in North Carolina do not have modems and are not connected to the internet, by state law.

"We look forward to working with them, proving that our elections were true and were valid and there was nothing wrong with them. If that's not the case, then we look to do an investigation, and if there needs to be criminal charges, they will be filed," McNeely told reporters.

"We will also be accommodated and assisted by the [General Assembly] police in our investigation, and they will be the ones that will help us go and find any evidence and help us secure it," he added.

McNeely brandished a roll of red evidence tape that he said would ensure voting machines at the Durham County Board of Elections office could be secured "so that nothing could go forward from here," until his group can conduct an inspection with a technician from the voting machine manufacturer.

The effort appears to mimic "audits" by Republicans in other states, notably Arizona, to cast doubt on the outcome of the 2020 election and election integrity in general.

Asked whether they believe President Joe Biden was duly elected, McNeely and Rep.
Bobby Hanig, R-Dare, said they didn't know. Rep. Larry Pittman, R-Cabarrus, said no.

State elections director Karen Brinson Bell has repeatedly told the House Freedom Caucus that no unauthorized person, least of all elected officials, is allowed to "inspect" voting machines.

Asked if that's changed, McNeely said he believes state law gives them that authority.

"So, we will start with that," he said, "and if we have to use, like I said, our escorts and the [General Assembly] police to help us, we will do whatever it takes to go about our mission."

 

I grew up in NC, folks. If you believe out of NC's 100 counties that Durham County, one of the largest heavily Black populated counties in the state, was chosen at random, well...buy some lottery tickets yourself. Let's remember the same NC GOP had multiple redistricting maps tossed out multiple times for obvious racial discrimination.

The Big Lie will never, ever end.

The Coup-Coup Birds Come Home To Roost, Con't

Yes, Donald Trump tried to engineer a coup to stay in power after he lost in 2020, according to a new Senate Judiciary Committee report made public this week.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday released a sweeping report about how former President Donald Trump and a top lawyer in the Justice Department attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Trump directly asked the Justice Department nine times to undermine the election result, and his chief of staff Mark Meadows broke administration policy by pressuring a Justice Department lawyer to investigate claims of election fraud, according to the report, which is based on witness interviews of top former Justice Department officials.

The Democratic-led committee also revealed that White House counsel Pat Cipollone threatened to quit in early January as Trump considered replacing then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, a DOJ lawyer who supported election fraud conspiracies.

Cipollone called the plot a "murder-suicide pact," according to the committee's investigation.

After the eight-month investigation, the findings highlight the relentlessness of Trump and some of his top advisers as they fixated on using the Justice Department to prop up false conspiracies of election fraud. The committee report called Trump's repeated demands an abuse of presidential power.

Soon after the release of the report Thursday morning, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley's office issued a GOP version, which pushes back on the Democrats' findings and defends Trump, saying he "listened to his senior advisors and followed their advice and recommendations."

Appearing on CNN's "New Day" Thursday morning, Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said the US was a "half a step away from a constitutional crisis, a full-blown constitutional crisis" and explained the events unfolded in three phases.

"First phase, Trump goes to court. Loses every lawsuit, which claims there was voter fraud in the election. Next, he decides he has to take over the Department of Justice and the attorney general, and have the attorney general push this narrative on to the states to tell them to stop from sending in their Electoral College vote totals. When that failed -- and our report goes into graphic detail of the efforts that were made -- the third step was to turn the mob loose on the Capitol the day we were counting the ballots," he said, referring to the January 6 riot.

The report released by Senate Democrats slams the actions of Clark, who they say became a crucial player in Trump's attempt to use the Justice Department for his political gain.

The Senate Judiciary Committee announced on Thursday they were referring him to the DC Bar for a review of his professional conduct, citing rules that bar attorneys from assisting in fraud and interfering with the administration of justice.

The committee said it has not yet made findings of possible criminality, since their investigation is not complete. Clark has not been charged with any crime, and an attorney for Clark didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Clark was not interviewed by the committee. Instead, top Justice Department officials described in interviews his and Trump's plans to overturn the election.

Clark had pushed Rosen and Richard Donoghue, then the second-in-command at the Justice Department, to use the Justice Department to announce election fraud investigations and and ask state leaders in Georgia to appoint electors, potentially disregarding the certified popular vote. Clark began making the pitch in late December after speaking with Trump directly, the committee found.

The Senate committee wrote he may have had assistance from "lower-level allies" within the Justice Department and even attempted to bargain with Rosen on his plan, saying he would turn down a chance at taking Rosen's place if Rosen would agree to support his Georgia elector initiative.

"Clark's proposal to wield DOJ's power to override the already-certified popular vote reflected a stunning distortion of DOJ's authority: DOJ protects ballot access and ballot integrity, but has no role in determining which candidate won a particular election," the committee wrote.

Donoghue and Rosen both testified to the committee.

 

The coup failed only because it was too much for some Republicans to go along with. 

VP Mike Pence refused to go along with Trump and Clark's alternate slate of electors plan.

 

The people at the state level who said "No, we won't do this" in 2020 to alternate electors and decertifying Democratic wins will have long been replaced with Trump loyalists in 2024 who will say yes when told to do this again. 

The coup was being planned by Trump and the DoJ.

It almost succeeded.

We came that close to losing the country.

Remember that.

The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

Republicans continue to hold the country hostage, and President Manchin continues to do everything he can to assist them.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said on Wednesday that he remains opposed to changing the Senate’s legislative filibuster, dealing a blow to progressive hopes to use a rules change as an escape hatch from a fight over the nation's borrowing limit.

“I’ve been very, very clear where I stand on the filibuster. Nothing changes,” Manchin told a gaggle of reporters outside of his Senate office.

Manchin's comments come as the idea of an debt ceiling exemption from the legislative filibuster, which requires 60 votes for most legislation, has gained steam within the Senate Democratic Caucus.

Democrats discussed the idea, as well as other potential backup plans, during a closed-door caucus lunch on Tuesday, with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) confirming that talks were underway.

And moderate Democrats, long viewed as wary to a rules change, indicated that they would support it.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said he could support a “pause” on the filibuster for the debt ceiling vote.

“There ought to be some way to suspend” the filibuster for a debt ceiling vote, Warner said.

But changing the legislative filibuster even just for a narrow carveout on the debt ceiling was a heavy lift for Senate Democrats, given entrenched opposition to making changes to the 60-vote rule from Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).

To invoke the "nuclear option," Democrats would need total unity from their 50-member caucus and Vice President Harris in the chair to break a tie. A spokesman for Sinema didn't immediately respond to a question on Wednesday about if she would support creating a carveout from the filibuster for the debt ceiling.

Manchin said as recently as Monday that he didn’t view changes to the filibuster as an option on the debt ceiling.

“The filibuster has nothing to do with debt ceiling. Basically, we have other tools that we can use and if we have to use them we should use them,” Manchin said at the time.

 

President Manchin continues to hold court and decree from his throne. Republicans make sure he can, but so do Democrats.

 

And nothing will improve until his power is removed by electing more Democrats in the Senate. The second Dems can get 53 or more seats, Manchin and VP Sinema become irrelevant.

 

But the odds of that happening in 2022 are rapidly diminishing. Manchin has no reason to cut his own throat by complying, and Republicans are 100% united on blocking everything.

 

Better Democrats, yes. But right now, we're learning that More Democrats are also necessary to keep the worse ones in line. 

In the back of the room, you can hear Mitch McConnell cackling.